Charles Frederick Henningsen

Charles Frederick Henningsen (21 February 1815-14 June 1877) was a British filibuster and mercenary who participated in civil wars and independence movements in Spain, Nicaragua, Hungary, and the United States. He came to speak French, Spanish, Russian, German, and Italian with the fluency of a native, and he unfortunately died without ever winning any of the causes for which he fought.

Biography
Charles Frederick Henningsen was born in England in 1815, the son of a Danish father and an Irish heiress; his family settled in Brussels, Belgium shortly after his birth. He was adventurous in his youth and was a fan of Lord Byron, idealizing the British nobility. After the onset of the Belgian Revolution, his family fled to Paris and then to London due to their pro-Dutch sympathies, and Henningsen's first war was the First Carlist War during the 1830s, during which he served as captain of bodyguard to the Carlist general Tomas de Zumalacarregui. In April 1835, he returned to England, but he later rejoined the Carlists, became a colonel after leading Carlist lancers in the capture of Madrid's outer fortifications, was taken prisoner, and later paroled and repatriated. He subsequently fought against the Russian Empire in Circassia during the Caucasian War, and he served under Hungarian general Lajos Kossuth during the Hungarian War of Independence. He commanded the fortress of Komarom during the revolution, and he escaped to Italy via Albania when the revolution was crushed.

In 1851, Henningsen accompanied Kossuth to the United States, and he remained in the USA as a representative of Hungarian interests. In 1856, he joined William Walker on his expedition to Nicaragua, offering to pay for his own needs, and asking for the rank of Captain; however, Walker made him a Major, a higher rank. He directed the defense of Rivas during two battles in 1856, and, on 14 December 1856, he had the Nicaraguan capital of Granada burned to the ground as the Central American armies surrounded the city. On 1 May 1857, Henningsen and Walker surrendered to the US Navy and were repatriated to the USA. Henningsen became a US citizen and married US Senator John M. Berrien's niece, and he served as a Colonel in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, frequently commanding the defenses of Richmond. After the war, he moved to Washington DC and was involved in the Cuban liberation movement, and he died in 1877.